Chapter 20

(A. N.)

1By assigning far too great an importance to this superficial character (in comparison with others), C. J. Sundevall (Tentamen, pp. 53-63) was induced to array the larks, hoopoes and several other heterogeneous groups in one “series,” to which he applied the name ofScutelliplantares.

LARKHALL,a mining and manufacturing town of Lanarkshire, Scotland, near the left bank of the Clyde, 1 m. S.E. of Glasgow by the Caledonian railway. Pop. (1901) 11,879. The highest bridge in Scotland has been thrown across the river Avon, which flows close by. Brick-making is carried on at several of the adjoining collieries. Other industries include bleaching, silk-weaving, fire-clay and enamelling works, and a sanitary appliances factory. The town has a public hall and baths.

LARKHANA,a town and district of British India, in Sind, Bombay. The town is on a canal not far from the Indus, and has a station on the North-Western railway, 281 m. N. by E. of Karachi. It is pleasantly situated in a fertile locality, and is well laid out with wide streets and spacious gardens. It is a centre of trade, with manufactures of cotton, silk, leather, metal-ware and paper. Pop. (1901) 14,543.

TheDistrict of Larkhana, lying along the right bank of the Indus, was formed out of portions of Sukkur and Karachi districts in 1901, and has an area of 5091 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 656,083, showing an increase of 10% in the decade. Its western part is mountainous, but the remainder is a plain of alluvium watered by canals and well cultivated, being the most fertile part of Sind. The staple grain-crops are rice, wheat and millets, which are exported, together with wool, cotton and other agricultural produce. Cotton cloth, carpets, salt and leather goods are manufactured, and dyeing is an important industry. The district is served by the North-Western railway.

LARKSPUR,in botany, the popular name for species ofDelphinium, a genus of hardy herbaceous plants belonging to the natural order Ranunculaceae (q.v.). They are of erect branching habit, with the flowers in terminal racemes, often of considerable length. Blue is the predominating colour, but purple, pink, yellow (D. Zalilorsulphureum), scarlet (D. cardinale) and white also occur; the “spur” is produced by the elongation of the upper sepal. The field or rocket larkspur (D. Ajacis), the branching larkspur (D. consolida),D. cardiopetalumand their varieties, are charming annuals; height about 18 in. The spotted larkspur(D. requienii) and a few others are biennials. The perennial larkspurs, however, are the most gorgeous of the family. There are numerous species of this group, natives of the old and new worlds, and a great number of varieties, raised chiefly fromD. exaltatum,D. formosumandD. grandiflorum. Members of this group vary from 2 ft. to 6 ft. in height.

The larkspurs are of easy cultivation, either in beds or herbaceous borders; the soil should be deeply dug and manured. The annual varieties are best sown early in April, where they are intended to flower, and suitably thinned out as growth is made. The perennial kinds are increased by the division of existing plants in spring, or by cuttings taken in spring or autumn and rooted in pots in cold frames. The varieties cannot be perpetuated with certainty by seed. Seed is the most popular means, however, of raising larkspurs in the majority of gardens, and is suitable for all ordinary purposes; it should be sown as soon as gathered, preferably in rows in nursery beds, and the young plants transplanted when ready. They should be fit for the borders in the spring of the following year, and if strong, should be planted in groups about 3 ft. apart. Delphiniums require exposure to light and air. Given plenty of space in a rich soil, the plants rarely require to be staked except in windy localities.

LARNACA,LarnicaorLarneca(anc.Citium, Turk.Tuzla), a town of the island of Cyprus, at the head of a bay on the south coast, 23 m. S.S.E. from Nicosia. Pop. (1901) 7964. It is the principal port of the island, exporting barley, wheat, cotton, raisins, oranges, lemons and gypsum. There is an iron pier 450 ft. long, but vessels anchor in the bay in from 16 to 70 ft. of water. Larnaca occupies the site of the ancientCitium, but the citadel of the ancient city was used to fill up the ancient harbour in 1879. The modern and principal residential part of the town is called Scala. Mycenaean tombs and other antiquities have been found (seeCyprus).

LA ROCHE,a small town in the Belgian Ardennes, noticeable for its antiquity and its picturesque situation. Pop. (1904) 2065. Its name is derived from its position on a rock commanding the river Ourthe, which meanders round the little place, and skirts the rock on which are the interesting ruins of the old castle of the 11th century. This is supposed to have been the site of a hunting box of Pippin, and certainly the counts of La Roche held it in fief from his descendants, the Carolingian rulers. In the 12th century they sold it to the counts of Luxemburg. In the 16th and 17th centuries the French and Imperialists frequently fought in its neighbourhood, and at Tenneville, not far distant, is shown the tomb of an English officer named Barnewall killed in one of these encounters in 1692. La Roche is famous as a tourist centre on account of its fine sylvan scenery. Among the local curiosities is the Diable-Château, a freak of nature, being the apparent replica of a medieval castle. LaRoche is connected by steam tramway with Melreux, a station on the main line from Marloie to Liége.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD,the name of an old French family which is derived from a castle1in the province of Angoumois (department of Charente), which was in its possession in the 11th century. François de La Rochefoucauld (1494-1517), godson of King Francis I., was made count in 1515. At the time of the wars of religion the family fought for the Protestant cause. François (1588-1650) was created duke and peer of France by Louis XIII. in 1622. His son François was the author of theMaxims, and the son of the latter acquired for his house the estates of La Roche-Guyon and Liancourt by his marriage with Jeanne Charlotte du Plessis-Liancourt. Alexandre, duc de La Rochefoucauld (d. 1762), left two daughters, who married into the Roye branch of the family. Of the numerous branches of the family the most famous are those of Roucy, Roye, Bayers, Doudeauville, Randan and Estissac, which all furnished distinguished statesmen and soldiers.

1The castle was largely rebuilt in the reign of Francis I., and is one of the finest specimens of the Renaissance architecture in France.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DE(1613-1680), the greatest maxim writer of France, one of her best memoir writers, and perhaps the most complete and accomplished representative of her ancient nobility, was born at Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs on the 15th of September 1613. The author of theMaxims, who during the lifetime of his father (see above) and part of his own most stirring years bore the title of prince de Marcillac, was somewhat neglected in the matter of education, at least of the scholastic kind; but he joined the army before he was sixteen, and almost immediately began to make a figure in public life. He had been nominally married a year before to Andrée de Vivonne, who seems to have been an affectionate wife, while not a breath of scandal touches her—two points in which La Rochefoucauld was perhaps more fortunate than he deserved. For some years Marcillac continued to take part in the annual campaigns, where he displayed the utmost bravery, though he never obtained credit for much military skill. Then he passed under the spell of Madame de Chevreuse, the first of three celebrated women who successively influenced his life. Through Madame de Chevreuse he became attached to the queen, Anne of Austria, and in one of her quarrels with Richelieu and her husband a wild scheme seems to have been formed, according to which Marcillac was to carry her off to Brussels on a pillion. These caballings against Richelieu, however, had no more serious results (an eight days’ experience of the Bastille excepted) than occasional exiles, that is to say, orders to retire to his father’s estates. After the death of the great minister (1642), opportunity seemed to be favourable to the vague ambition which then animated half the nobility of France. Marcillac became one of the so-calledimportants, and took an active part in reconciling the queen and Condé in a league against Gaston of Orleans. But the growing credit of Mazarin came in his way, and theliaisonin which about this time (1645) he became entangled with the beautiful duchess of Longueville made him irrevocably a Frondeur. He was a conspicuous figure in the siege of Paris, fought desperately in the desultory engagements which were constantly taking place, and was severely wounded at the siege of Mardyke. In the second Fronde Marcillac followed the fortunes of Condé, and the death of his father, which happened at the time (1650), gave rise to a characteristic incident. The nobility of the province gathered to the funeral, and the new duke de La Rochefoucauld took the opportunity of persuading them to follow him in an attempt on the royalist garrison of Saumur, which, however, was not successful. We have no space to follow La Rochefoucauld through the tortuous cabals and negotiations of the later Fronde; it is sufficient to say that he was always brave and generally unlucky. His run of bad fortune reached its climax in the battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine (1652), where he was shot through the head, and it was thought that he would lose the sight of both eyes. It was nearly a year before he recovered, and then he found himself at his country seat of Verteuil, with no result of twenty years’ fighting and intriguing except impaired health, a seriously embarrassed fortune, and some cause for bearing a grudge against almost every party and man of importance in the state. He spent some years in this retirement, and he was fortunate enough (thanks chiefly to the fidelity of Gourville, who had been in his service, and who, passing into the service of Mazarin and of Condé, had acquired both wealth and influence) to be able to repair in some measure the breaches in his fortune. He did not, however, return to court life much before Mazarin’s death, when Louis XIV. was on the eve of assuming absolute power, and the turbulent aristocratic anarchy of the Fronde was a thing utterly of the past.

Somewhat earlier, La Rochefoucauld had taken his place in the salon of Madame de Sablé, a member of the old Rambouillet coterie, and the founder of a kind of successor to it. It was known that he, like almost all his more prominent contemporaries, had spent his solitude in writing memoirs, while the special literary employment of the Sablé salon was the fabrication ofSentencesandMaxims. In 1662, however, more trouble than reputation, and not a little of both, was given to him by a surreptitious publication of his memoirs, or what purported to be his memoirs, by the Elzevirs. Many of his old friends were deeply wounded, and he hastened to deny flatly the authenticity of the publication, a denial which (as it seems, without any reason) was not very generally accepted. Three years later (1665) he published, though without his name, the still more famousMaxims, which at once established him high among the men of letters of the time. About the same date began the friendship with Madame de la Fayette, which lasted till the end of his life. The glimpses which we have of him henceforward are chiefly derived from the letters of Madame de Sévigné, and, though they show him suffering agonies from gout, are on the whole pleasant. He had a circle of devoted friends; he was recognized as a moralist and man of letters of the first rank; he might have entered the Academy for the asking; and in the altered measure of the times his son, the prince de Marcillac, to whom some time before his death he resigned his titles and honours, enjoyed a considerable position at court. Above all, La Rochefoucauld was generally recognized by his contemporaries from the king downward as a type of the older noblesse as it was before the sun of the great monarch dimmed its brilliant qualities. This position he has retained until the present day. He died at Paris on the 17th of March 1680, of the disease which had so long tormented him.

La Rochefoucauld’s character, if considered without the prejudice which a dislike to his ethical views has sometimes occasioned, is thoroughly respectable and even amiable. Like almost all his contemporaries, he saw in politics little more than a chessboard where the people at large were but pawns. The weight of testimony, however, inclines to the conclusion that he was unusually scrupulous in his conduct, and that his comparative ill-success in the struggle arose more from this scrupulousness than from anything else. He has been charged with irresolution, and there is some ground for admitting the charge so far as to pronounce him one of those the keenness of whose intellect, together with their apprehension of both sides of a question, interferes with their capacity as men of action. But there is no ground whatever for the view which represents the Maxims as the mere outcome of the spite of a disappointed intriguer, disappointed through his own want of skill rather than of fortune.

His importance as a social and historical figure is, however, far inferior to his importance in literature. His work in this respect consists of three parts—letters,Memoirsand theMaxims. His letters exceed one hundred in number, and are biographically valuable, besides displaying not a few of his literary characteristics; but they need not further detain us. TheMemoirs, when they are read in their proper form, yield in literary merit, in interest, and in value to no memoirs of the time, not even to those of Retz, between whom and La Rochefoucauld there was a strange mixture of enmity and esteem which resulted in a couple of most characteristic “portraits.” But their history isunique in its strangeness. It has been said that a pirated edition appeared in Holland, and this, despite the author’s protest, continued to be reprinted for some thirty years. It has been now proved to be a mere cento of the work of half a dozen different men, scarcely a third of which is La Rochefoucauld’s, and which could only have been possible at a time when it was the habit of persons who frequented literary society to copy pell-mell in commonplace books the MS. compositions of their friends and others. Some years after La Rochefoucauld’s death a new recension appeared, somewhat less incorrect than the former, but still largely adulterated, and this held its ground for more than a century. Only in 1817 did anything like a genuine edition (even then by no means perfect) appear. TheMaxims, however, had no such fate. The author re-edited them frequently during his life, with alterations and additions; a few were added after his death, and it is usual now to print the whole of them, at whatever time they appeared, together. Thus taken, they amount to about seven hundred in number, in hardly any case exceeding half a page in length, and more frequently confined to two or three lines. The view of conduct which they illustrate is usually and not quite incorrectly summed up in the words “everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest.” But though not absolutely incorrect, the phrase is misleading. TheMaximsare in no respect mere deductions from or applications of any such general theory. They are on the contrary independent judgments on different relations of life, different affections of the human mind, and so forth, from which, taken together, the general view may be deduced or rather composed. Sentimental moralists have protested loudly against this view, yet it is easier to declaim against it in general than to find a flaw in the several parts of which it is made up. With a few exceptions La Rochefoucauld’s maxims represent the matured result of the reflection of a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect, on the conduct and motives which have guided himself and his fellows. There is as little trace in them of personal spite as offorfanterie de vice. But the astonishing excellence of the literary medium in which they are conveyed is even more remarkable than the general soundness of their ethical import. In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clearness, fulness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. HisMaximsare never mere epigrams; they are never platitudes; they are never dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would be impossible to pack them closer, yet there is no undue compression; he has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of substance. The comparison which occurs most frequently, and which is perhaps on the whole the justest, is that of a bronze medallion, and it applies to the matter no less than to the form. Nothing is left unfinished, yet none of the workmanship is finical. The sentiment, far from being merely hard, as the sentimentalists pretend, has a vein of melancholy poetry running through it which calls to mind the traditions of La Rochefoucauld’s devotion to the romances of chivalry. The maxims are never shallow; each is the text for a whole sermon of application and corollary which any one of thought and experience can write. Add to all this that the language in which they are written is French, still at almost its greatest strength, and chastened but as yet not emasculated by the reforming influence of the 17th century, and it is not necessary to say more. To the literary critic no less than to the man of the world La Rochefoucauld ranks among the scanty number of pocket-books to be read and re-read with ever new admiration, instruction and delight.

The editions of La Rochefoucauld’sMaxims(as the full title runs,Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales) published in his lifetime bear the dates 1665 (editio princeps), 1666, 1671, 1675, 1678. An important edition which appeared after his death in 1693 may rank almost with these. As long as theMemoirsremained in the state above described, no edition of them need be mentioned, and none of the complete works was possible. The previous more or less complete editions are all superseded by that of MM Gilbert and Gourdault (1868-1883), in the series of “Grands Écrivains de la France,” 3 vols. There are still some puzzles as to the text; but this edition supplies all available material in regard to them. The handsomest separate edition of theMaximsis the so-calledÉdition des bibliophiles(1870); but cheap and handy issues are plentiful. See the English version by G. H. Powell (1903). Nearly all the great French critics of the 19th century have dealt more or less with La Rochefoucauld: the chief recent monograph on him is that of J. Bourdeau in theGrands écrivains français(1893).

(G. Sa.)

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE FRÉDÉRIC,Duc de(1747-1827), French social reformer, was born at La Roche Guyon on the 11th of January 1747, the son of François Armand de La Rochefoucauld, duc d’Estissac, grand master of the royal wardrobe. The duc de Liancourt became an officer of carbineers, and married at seventeen. A visit to England seems to have suggested the establishment of a model farm at Liancourt, where he reared cattle imported from England and Switzerland. He also set up spinning machines on his estate, and founded a school of arts and crafts for the sons of soldiers, which became in 1788 the École des Enfants de la Patrie under royal protection. Elected to the states-general of 1789 he sought in vain to support the cause of royalty while furthering the social reforms he had at heart. On the 12th of July, two days before the fall of the Bastille, he warned Louis XVI. of the state of affairs in Paris, and met his exclamation that there was a revolt with the answer, “Non, sire, c’est une révolution.” On the 18th of July he became president of the Assembly. Established in command of a military division in Normandy, he offered Louis a refuge in Rouen, and, failing in this effort, assisted him with a large sum of money. After the events of the 10th of August 1792 he fled to England, where he was the guest of Arthur Young, and thence passed to America. After the assassination of his cousin, Louis-Alexandre, duc de La Rochefoucauld d’Enville, at Gisors on the 14th of September 1792 he assumed the title of duc de La Rochefoucauld. He returned to Paris in 1799, but received small favour from Napoleon. At the Restoration he entered the House of Peers, but Louis XVIII. refused to reinstate him as master of the wardrobe, although his father had paid 400,000 francs for the honour. Successive governments, revolutionary and otherwise, recognized the value of his institutions at Liancourt, and he was for twenty-three years government inspector of his school of arts and crafts, which had been removed to Châlons. He was one of the first promoters of vaccination in France; he established a dispensary in Paris, and he was an active member of the central boards of administration for hospitals, prisons and agriculture. His opposition to the government in the House of Peers led to his removal in 1823 from the honorary positions he held, while the vaccination committee, of which he was president, was suppressed. The academies of science and of medicine admitted him to their membership by way of protest. Official hostility pursued him even after his death (27th of March 1827), for the old pupils of his school were charged by the military at his funeral. His works, chiefly on economic questions, include books on the English system of taxation, poor-relief and education.

His eldest son, François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1765-1848), succeeded his father in the House of Peers. The second, Alexandre, comte de La Rochefoucauld (1767-1841), married a San Domingo heiress allied to the Beauharnais family. Mme de La Rochefoucauld became dame d’honneur to the empress Josephine, and their eldest daughter married a brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese. La Rochefoucauld became ambassador successively to Vienna (1805) and to the Hague (1808-1810), where he negotiated the union of Holland with France. During the “Hundred Days” he was made a peer of France. He subsequently devoted himself to philanthropic work, and in 1822 became deputy to the Chamber and sat with the constitutional royalists. He was again raised to the peerage in 1831.The third son, Frédéric Gaétan, marquis de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1779-1863), was a zealous philanthropist and a partisan of constitutional monarchy. He took no part in politics after 1848. The marquis wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration; he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet; and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems.

The third son, Frédéric Gaétan, marquis de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1779-1863), was a zealous philanthropist and a partisan of constitutional monarchy. He took no part in politics after 1848. The marquis wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration; he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet; and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems.

LA ROCHEJACQUELEIN, DE,the name of an ancient French family of La Vendée, celebrated for its devotion to the throne during and after the Revolution. Its original name was Duverger, derived from a fief near Bressuire in Poitou, and its pedigreeis traceable to the 13th century. In 1505 Gui Duverger married Renée, heiress of Jacques Lemartin, seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, whose name he assumed. His grandson, Louis Duverger, seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, was a devoted adherent of Henry II., and was badly wounded at the battle of Arques; other members of the family were also distinguished soldiers, and the seigniory was raised to a countship and marquisate in reward for their services.

At the outbreak of the Revolution the chief of the family wasHenri Louis Auguste, marquis de La Rochejacquelein,maréchal de campin the royal army, who had three sons named after himself—Henri, Louis and Auguste. The marquis fled abroad with his second son Louis at the time of the emigration of the nobles. He entered the service of Great Britain, and died in San Domingo in 1802.

Henri, comte de La Rochejacquelein, born at Dubertien, near Châtillon, sur Sèvres, on the 20th of August 1772, did not emigrate with his father. He served in the constitutional guard of the king, and remained in Paris till the execution of Louis XVI. He then took refuge with the marquis de Lescure on his own estates in Poitou. When the anti-clerical policy of the revolutionary powers provoked the rising of the peasantry of La Vendée, he put himself at the head of the men of his neighbourhood, and came rapidly to the front among the gentlemen whom the peasants took for leaders. In spite of his youth and his reluctance to assume the responsibility, he was chosen as commander-in-chief after the defeat of the Vendéans by the republicans at Cholet. His brilliant personal courage, his amiability and his loyalty to the cause make him a very attractive figure, but a commander-in-chief of the Vendéans, who came and went as they pleased, had little real power or opportunity to display the qualities of a general. The comte de La Rochejacquelein had in fact to obey his army, and could only display his personal valour in action. He could not avert the mistaken policy which led to the rout at Le Mans, and was finally shot in an obscure skirmish at Nouaillé on the 4th of March 1794.

Louis, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, the younger brother of Henri, accompanied his father in the emigration, served in the army of Condé, and entered the service of England in America. He returned to France during the Consulate, and in 1801 married the marquise de Lescure, widow of his brother’s friend, who was mortally wounded at Cholet. Marie Louise Victoire de Donnissan, born at Versailles on the 25th of October 1772, belonged to a court family and was the god-daughter of Mme Victoire, daughter of Louis XV. At the age of seventeen she married the marquis de Lescure, whom she accompanied in the war of La Vendée. After his death she went through various adventures recorded in her memoirs, first published at Bordeaux in 1815. They are of extreme interest, and give a remarkable picture of the war and the fortunes of the royalists. She saved much of her own property and her first husband’s, when a conciliatory policy was adopted after the fall of the Terrorists. After her second marriage she lived with her husband on her estates, both refusing all offers to take service with Napoleon. In 1814 they took an active part in the royalist movement in and about Bordeaux. In 1815 the marquis endeavoured to bring about another Vendéan rising for the king, and was shot in a skirmish with the Imperialist forces at the Pont des Marthes on the 4th of June 1815. The marquis died at Orleans in 1857.

Their eldest son,Henri Auguste Georges, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, born at Château Citran in the Gironde on the 28th of September 1805, was educated as a soldier, served in Spain in 1822, and as a volunteer in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828. During the reign of Louis Philippe he adhered to the legitimist policy of his family, but he became reconciled to the government of Napoleon III. and was mainly known as a clerical orator and philanthropist. He died on the 7th of January 1867.

His son and successor,Julien Marie Gaston, born at Chartres on the 27th of March 1833, was an active legitimist deputy in the Assembly chosen at the close of the German War of 1870-1871. He was a strong opponent of Thiers, and continued to contest constituencies as a legitimist with varying fortunes till his death in 1897.

Authorities.—Henri de La Rochejacquelein et la guerre de la Vendée d’après des documentsinédits (Niort, 1890); A. F. Nettement,Vie de Mme la Marquise de La Rochejacquelein(Paris, 1876). TheMemoirsof the marquise were translated into English by Sir Walter Scott, and issued as a volume of “Constable’s Miscellany” (Edinburgh, 1827).

LA ROCHELLE,a seaport of western France, capital of the department of Charente-Inférieure, 90 m. S. by E. of Nantes on the railway to Bordeaux. Pop. (1906) town 24,524, commune 33,858. La Rochelle is situated on the Atlantic coast on an inlet opening off the great bay in which lie the islands of Ré and Oléron. Its fortifications, constructed by Vauban, have a circuit of 3½ m. with seven gates. Towards the sea are three towers, of which the oldest (1384) is that of St Nicholas. The apartment in the first storey was formerly used as a chapel. The Chain Tower, built towards the end of the 14th century, is so called from the chain which guarded the harbour at this point; the entrance to the tidal basin was at one time spanned by a great pointed arch between the two towers. The lantern tower (1445-1476), seven storeys high, is surmounted by a lofty spire and was once used as a lighthouse. Of the ancient gateways only one has been preserved in its entirety, that of the “Grosse Horloge,” a huge square tower of the 14th or 15th century, the corner turrets of which have been surmounted with trophies since 1746. The cathedral of La Rochelle (St Louis or St Bartholomew) is a heavy Grecian building (1742-1762) with a dome above the transept, erected on the site of the old church of St Bartholomew, destroyed in the 16th century and now represented by a solitary tower dating from the 14th century. Externally the town-house is in the Gothic style of the latter years of the 15th century and has the appearance of a fortress, though its severity is much relieved by the beautiful carving of the two entrances, of the machicolations and of the two belfries. The buildings looking into the inner court are in the Renaissance style (16th and early 17th centuries) and contain several fine apartments. In the old episcopal palace (which was in turn the residence of Sully, the prince of Condé, Louis XIII., and Anne of Austria, and the scene of the marriage of Alphonso VI. of Portugal with a princess of Savoy) accommodation has been provided for a library, a collection of records and a museum of art and antiquities. Other buildings of note are an arsenal with an artillery museum, a large hospital, a special Protestant hospital, a military hospital and a lunatic asylum for the department. In the botanical gardens there are museums of natural history. Medieval and Renaissance houses give a peculiar character to certain districts: several have French, Latin or Greek inscriptions of a moral or religious turn and in general of Protestant origin. Of these old houses the most interesting is one built in themiddleof the 16th century and wrongly known as that of Henry II. The parade-ground, which forms the principal public square, occupies the site of the castle demolished in 1590. Some of the streets have side-arcades; the public wells are fed from a large reservoir in the Champ de Mars; and among the promenades are the Cours des Dames with the statue of Admiral Duperré, and outside the Charruyer Park on the west front of the ramparts, and the Mail, a beautiful piece of greensward. In this direction are the sea-bathing establishments.

La Rochelle is the seat of a bishopric and a prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Bank of France; its educational establishments include an ecclesiastical seminary, a lycée and a training college for girls. Ship-building, saw-milling and the manufacture of briquettes and chemicals, sardine and tunny-preserving and petroleum-refining are among the industries. The rearing of oysters and mussels and the exploitation of salt marshes is carried on in the vicinity.

The inlet of La Rochelle is protected by a stone mole constructed by Richelieu and visible at low tide. The harbour, one of the safest on the coast, is entered by a channel 2730 yds. long,and comprises an outer harbour opening on the one hand into a floating basin, on the other into a tidal basin with another floating basin adjoining it. Behind the tidal basin is the Maubec reservoir, the waters of which, along with those of the Marans canal, help to scour the port and navigable channel. Some 200 sailing ships are engaged in the fisheries, and the fish market of La Rochelle is the most important on the west coast. The harbour is, however, inaccessible to the largest vessels, for the accommodation of which the port of La Pallice, inaugurated in 1891, was created. Lying about 3 m. W.S.W. of La Rochelle, this port opens into the bay opposite the eastern extremity of the island of Ré. It was artificially excavated and affords safe anchorage in all weathers. The outer port, protected by two jetties, has an area of 29 acres and a depth of 16½ ft. below lowest tide-level. At the extremity of the breakwater is a wharf where ships may discharge without entering the basin. A lock connects with the inner basin, which has an area of 27 acres, with 5900 ft. of quayage, a minimum depth of 28 ft., and depths of 29½ ft. and 36 ft. at high, neap and spring tides. Connected with the basin are two graving docks. La Pallice has regular communication with South America by the vessels of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and by those of other companies with London, America, West Africa, Egypt and the Far East. The port has petroleum refineries and chemical manure works.

In 1906 there entered the port of La Rochelle, including the dock of La Pallice, 441 vessels with a tonnage of 629,038, and cleared 468 vessels with a tonnage of 664,861 (of which 235 of 241,146 tons cleared with ballast). These figures do not include vessels entering from, or clearing for, other ports in France. The imports (value, £1,276,000 in 1900 as compared with £1,578,000 in 1907) include coal and patent fuel, superphosphates, natural phosphates, nitrate of soda, pyrites, building-timber, wines and alcohol, pitch, dried codfish, petroleum, jute, wood-pulp. Exports (value, £1,294,000 in 1900; £1,979,000 in 1907) include wine and brandy, fancy goods, woven goods, garments, skins, coal and briquettes, furniture, potatoes.

La Rochelle existed at the close of the 10th century under the name of Rupella. It belonged to the barony of Châtelaillon, which was annexed by the duke of Aquitaine and succeeded Châtelaillon as chief town in Aunis. In 1199 it received a communal charter from Eleanor, duchess of Guienne, and it was in its harbour that John Lackland disembarked when he came to try to recover the domains seized by Philip Augustus. Captured by Louis VIII. in 1224, it was restored to the English in 1360 by the treaty of Brétigny, but it shook off the yoke of the foreigner when Du Guesclin recovered Saintonge. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries La Rochelle, then an almost independent commune, was one of the great maritime cities of France. From its harbour in 1402 Jean de Béthencourt set out for the conquest of the Canaries, and its seamen were the first to turn to account the discovery of the new world. The salt-tax provoked a rebellion at Rochelle which Francis I. repressed in person; in 1568 the town secured exemption by the payment of a large sum. At the Reformation La Rochelle early became one of the chief centres of Calvinism, and during the religious wars it armed privateers which preyed on Catholic vessels in the Channel and on the high seas. In 1571 a synod of the Protestant churches of France was held within its walls under the presidency of Beza for the purpose of drawing up a confession of faith. After the massacre of St Bartholomew, La Rochelle held out for six and a half months against the Catholic army, which was ultimately obliged to raise the siege after losing more than 20,000 men. The peace of the 24th of June 1573, signed by the people of La Rochelle in the name of all the Protestant party, granted the Calvinists full liberty of worship in several places of safety. Under Henry IV. the town remained quiet, but under Louis XIII. it put itself again at the head of the Huguenot party. Its vessels blockaded the mouth of the Gironde and stopped the commerce of Bordeaux, and also seized the islands of Ré and Oléron and several vessels of the royal fleet. Richelieu then resolved to subdue the town once for all. In spite of the assistance rendered by the English troops under Buckingham and in spite of the fierce energy of their mayor Guiton, the people of La Rochelle were obliged to capitulate after a year’s siege (October 1628). During this investment Richelieu raised the celebrated mole which cut off the town from the open sea. La Rochelle then became the principal port for the trade between France and the colony of Canada. But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) deprived it of some thousands of its most industrious inhabitants, and the loss of Canada by France completed for the time the ruin of its commerce. Its privateers, however, maintained a vigorous struggle with the English during the republic and the empire.See P. Suzanne,La Rochelle pittoresque(La Rochelle, 1903), and E. Couneau,La Rochelle disparue(La Rochelle, 1904).

See P. Suzanne,La Rochelle pittoresque(La Rochelle, 1903), and E. Couneau,La Rochelle disparue(La Rochelle, 1904).

LA ROCHE-SUR-YON,a town of western France, capital of the department of Vendée, on an eminence on the right bank of the Yon, 48 m. S. of Nantes on the railway to Bordeaux. Pop. (1906) town 10,666, commune 13,685. The castle of La Roche, which probably existed before the time of the crusades, and was frequently attacked or taken in the Hundred Years’ War and in the wars of religion, was finally dismantled under Louis XIII. When Napoleon in 1804 made this place, then of no importance, the chief town of a department, the stones from its ruins were employed in the erection of the administrative buildings, which, being all produced at once after a regular plan, have a monotonous effect. The equestrian statue of Napoleon I. in an immense square overlooking the rest of the town; the statue of General Travot, who was engaged in the “pacification” of La Vendée; the museum, with several paintings by P. Baudry, a native artist, of whom there is a statue in the town, are the only objects of interest. Napoleon-Vendée and Bourbon-Vendée, the names borne by the town according to the dominance of either dynasty, gave place to the original name after the revolution of 1870. The town is the seat of a prefect and a court of assizes, and has a tribunal of first instance, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France, a lycée for boys and training colleges for both sexes. It is a market for farm-produce, horses and cattle, and has flour-mills. The dog fairs of La Roche are well known.

LAROMIGUIÈRE, PIERRE(1756-1837), French philosopher, was born at Livignac on the 3rd of November 1756, and died on the 12th of August 1837 in Paris. As professor of philosophy at Toulouse he was unsuccessful and incurred the censure of the parliament by a thesis on the rights of property in connexion with taxation. Subsequently he came to Paris, where he was appointed professor of logic in the École Normale and lectured in the Prytanée. In 1799 he was made a member of the Tribunate, and in 1833 of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. In 1793 he publishedProjet d’éléments de metaphysique, a work characterized by lucidity and excellence of style. He wrote also twoMémoires, read before the Institute,Les Paradoxes de Condillac(1805) andLeçons de philosophie(1815-1818). Laromiguière’s philosophy is interesting as a revolt against the extreme physiological psychology of the natural scientists, such as Cabanis. He distinguished between those psychological phenomena which can be traced directly to purely physical causes, and the actions of the soul which originate from within itself. Psychology was not for him a branch of physiology, nor on the other hand did he give to his theory an abstruse metaphysical basis. A pupil of Condillac and indebted for much of his ideology to Destutt de Tracy, he attached a fuller importance to Attention as a psychic faculty. Attention provides the facts, Comparison groups and combines them, while Reason systematizes and explains. The soul is active in its choice,i.e.is endowed with freewill, and is, therefore, immortal. For natural science as a method of discovery he had no respect. He held that its judgments are, at the best, statements of identity, and that its so-called discoveries are merely the reiteration, in a new form, of previous truisms. Laromiguière was not the first to develop these views; he owed much to Condillac, Destutt de Tracy and Cabanis. But, owing to the accuracy of his language and the purity of his style, his works had great influence, especially over Armand Marrast, Cardaillac and Cousin. A lecture of his in the École Normale impressed Cousin so strongly that he at once devoted himself to the study of philosophy. Jouffroy and Taine agree in describing him as one of the great thinkers of the 19th century.

See Damiron,Essai sur la philosophie en France au XIXesiècle; Biran,Examen des leçons de philosophie; Victor Cousin,De Methodo sive de Analysi; Daunou,Notice sur Laromiguière; H. Taine,Les Philosophes classiques du XIXesiècle; Gatien Arnoult,Étude sur Laromiguière; Compayré,Notice sur Laromiguière; Ferraz,Spiritualisme et Libéralisme; F. Picavet,Les Idéologues.

LARRA, MARIANO JOSÉ DE(1809-1837), Spanish satirist, was born at Madrid in 1809. His father served as a regimental doctor in the French army, and was compelled to leave thePeninsula with his family in 1812. In 1817 Larra returned to Spain, knowing less Spanish than French. His nature was disorderly, his education was imperfect, and, after futile attempts to obtain a degree in medicine or law, he made an imprudent marriage at the age of twenty, broke with his relatives and became a journalist. On the 27th of April 1831 he produced his first play,No más mostrador, based on two pieces by Scribe and Dieulafoy. Though wanting in originality, it is brilliantly written, and held the stage for many years. On the 24th of September 1834 he producedMacias, a play based on his own historical novel,El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente(1834). The drama and novel are interesting as experiments, but Larra was essentially a journalist, and the increased liberty of the press after the death of Ferdinand VII. gave his caustic talent an ampler field. He was already famous under the pseudonyms of “Juan Pérez de Munguía” and “Figaro” which he used inEl Pobrecito HabladorandLa Revista Españolarespectively. Madrid laughed at his grim humour; ministers feared his vitriolic pen and courted him assiduously; he was elected as deputy for Ávila, and a great career seemed to lie before him. But the era of militarypronunciamientosruined his personal prospects and patriotic plans. His writing took on a more sombre tinge; domestic troubles increased his pessimism, and, in consequence of a disastrous love-affair, he committed suicide on the 13th of February 1837. Larra lived long enough to prove himself the greatest prose-writer that Spain can boast during the 19th century. He wrote at great speed with the constant fear of the censor before his eyes, but no sign of haste is discernible in his work, and the dexterity with which he aims his venomous shafts is amazing. His political instinct, his abundance of ideas and his forcible, mordant style would have given him a foremost position at any time and in any country; in Spain, and in his own period, they placed him beyond all rivalry.

(J. F.-K.)

LARSA(BiblicalEllasar, Gen. xiv. 1), an important city of ancient Babylonia, the site of the worship of the sun-god, Shamash, represented by the ancient ruin mound of Senkereh (Senkera). It lay 15 m. S.E. of the ruin mounds of Warka (anc.Erech), near the east bank of the Shatt-en-Nil canal. Larsa is mentioned in Babylonian inscriptions as early as the time of Ur-Gur, 2700 or 2800B.C., who built or restored theziggurat(stage-tower) of E-Babbar, the temple of Shamash. Politically it came into special prominence at the time of the Elamite conquest, when it was made the centre of Elamite dominion in Babylonia, perhaps as a special check upon the neighbouring Erech, which had played a prominent part in the resistance to the Elamites. At the time of Khammurabi’s successful struggle with the Elamite conquerors it was ruled by an Elamite king named Eriaku, the Arioch of the Bible, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects. It finally lost its independence under Samsu-iluna, son of Khammurabi,c.1900B.C., and from that time until the close of the Babylonian period it was a subject city of Babylon. Loftus conducted excavations at this site in 1854. He describes the ruins as consisting of a low, circular platform, about 4½ m. in circumference, rising gradually from the level of the plain to a central mound 70 ft. high. This represents the ancientzigguratof the temple of Shamash, which was in part explored by Loftus. From the inscriptions found there it appears that, besides the kings already mentioned, Khammurabi, Burna-buriash (buryas) and the great Nebuchadrezzar restored or rebuilt the temple of Shamash. The excavations at Senkereh were peculiarly successful in the discovery of inscribed remains, consisting of clay tablets, chiefly contracts, but including also an important mathematical tablet and a number of tablets of a description almost peculiar to Senkereh, exhibiting in bas-relief scenes of everyday life. Loftus found also the remains of an ancient Babylonian cemetery. From the ruins it would appear that Senkereh ceased to be inhabited at or soon after the Persian conquest.

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